


half a yellow sun

by philthestone



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen, i thought 'wouldnt it be neat if gamora and michelle hung out on a bench' and then i wrote the fic, set immediately BEFORE infinity war so a lot of deets are fudged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 06:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11640885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: “Do you come here often?” asks Gamora, tilting her head.“No,” says the girl. “I’m just here waiting for my dumb friend Peter.”The birds coo.“Would you believe me,” says Gamora, “if I told you that I, too, am here waiting for my dumb friend Peter.”The girl considers this, and then nods, as though dealing with a dumb friend named Peter on the daily is something to respect in another person.





	half a yellow sun

**Author's Note:**

> I had this thought last night and after a month of writers block i sat down and wrote the whole thing in two sittings God Bless America. i guess like it’s set right before infinity war??? idk i took a couple details from the teaser trailer and also HOW PURE WAS SPIDERMAN HOMECOMING here have an obscure fic where gamora and michelle jones hang out on a bench.

There’s a girl sitting on the bench beside her, her nose buried in a paper-bound book. 

Gamora resists the urge to look over curiously and scope out its cover and pages; she hasn’t seen pressed paper since a mission on an old Xandarian moon outpost nearly ten years ago, and it’s not like she thinks back on that experience with fondness. It’s just – information is more easily stored in mechanized databanks. Everyone knows this. 

Gamora cannot help but think that Terrans have a stubborn tendency to do things for the sake of sentiment instead of practicality. For the first time since they touched down on Terra, Gamora thinks that in _this_ , Peter reflects his home planet absurdly well. 

In other things – he’s been gone for a long time, is what Gamora has let her thoughts settle on. He hasn’t said anything, but – it’s _Peter_. He’s not an awkward person by nature, but she’s known him a long time by now, and she’s trained to be observant, and it becomes more evident by the second that he’s out of his depth. It’s in the erratic flick of his eyes, widening from point to point and landmark to landmark, skating up buildings and narrowing at transport vehicles. _Cars_ , he’d called them, she remembers, and files away the knowledge that Terran technology advances swiftly. It’s in the way he holds his arms, close to his sides when he thinks no one is looking at him, and the exaggerated swagger to his walk that she stops herself from calling out because she’s had it mentally categorized as a defensive mechanism from roughly the third minute after she met him.

She hasn’t said anything so far, which is maybe unwise, given the circumstances (they may all die within the next three days) and perhaps foolish (if he doesn’t stop bouncing his leg erratically every time they board the underground transport train she may just break it off on principle), but it’s just –

It just _is_. She doesn’t give him an opening because she doesn’t think he’s ready for an opening just yet, and Peter is the type to let all his thoughts – whether relevant or totally inane – spill out of him the moment he’s _given_ an opening. He’s not picky about the venue, either; it can happen in their shared bunk, or on walks through the paths of whatever planet they happen to be on, or the cockpit during midnight watch, or even in the kitchen, digging through the cooler for last night’s tupperware of Unidentified Fridge Crap to heat up for breakfast, Peter still blinking the sleep from his eyes, the two of them the only people up so early in the time cycle.

Okay, so. _So_. Maybe he’s just that way with her.

But.

He’s in the building opposite to her bench, now. It’s a library, he told her. Gamora knows libraries, of course, something that is perhaps comfortingly a universal constant, but she wonders if this library will be like anything she’s known before. Certainly, if the girl on the bench’s reading material is anything to go by, Terra’s superficial similarities to Xandar are rapidly decreasing by the second. 

_Maps_ , Peter had said, running a hand through his curls so that they stuck up a little stupidly and spinning around a little on the spot. He looked – _looks_ – more like the people around them than she ever could; his pasty skin tone seemed to be dotted around the city block fairly regularly despite Terrans’ phenotypic diversity, and he was wearing one of his old t-shirts, which were apparently another life-staple that most civilizations seemed to have embraced. Gamora has seen many t-shirts in her lifetime, at least. 

His red ravager’s jacket was left behind on the ship. Gamora had spent most of the morning with one eye trained on him and one eye on their surroundings (metaphorically – her eyes had no ambidextrous abilities, unfortunately), and she had caught him absently rubbing at his bare arms more than once, despite the warmth of the bright yellow sun above them. 

_We need a map, so we can blend in_.

He’d looked uncertain, visibly so, for the first time since they’d touched down, and Gamora had (once again) refrained from mentioning that a map would further contribute to any appearance of not belonging to these parts. Clearly, he’d been speaking relatively. Relative to a holographic navigator, paper and plastic maps were far less eye-catching. 

Gamora looks up, now, around her at the sky-high buildings and blocks of bright artificial colours and concrete, and remembers what Peter has told her in the past, usually a little drunk, about the long fields of grass and the big blue skies of his childhood. Peter finds something to be wide-eyed about in every new planet they land on, which Gamora has always chalked up to his eight years on Terra. Now, though, she wonders if that’s just who Peter is, and then she wonders if he didn’t expect that same experience of _newness_ to apply to his home planet. The city of New York, certainly, has very few long fields of grass, from what Gamora has seen. 

She hasn’t seen a whole lot, though. The rest of the team is still on the ship, explicitly because they didn’t want anyone to blow up or catch fire, but implicitly because Terrans don’t have much experience with off-worlders, from what Peter knows and Thor had said. 

_Midgardians are an honourable race_ , he told her, his voice ever booming and warm, _but they have a very limited understanding of the universe_.

This is fair, Gamora supposes. Compared to the rest of the galaxy, Terra is, on paper, a tiny backwater planet in one back corner of the great expanse of space. Hardly a hub of intergalactic activity, she knows. All-around pretty nondescript.

Gamora is out with Peter, for emotional support. This was also stated explicitly, by herself and Rocket and Groot and Drax _and_ Mantis, even though it would have probably been less messy to just pretend that it was because she was co-leader and can kill most sentients in fifty-two different ways with only her ankle. Peter had given her a grateful smile even while he said, “Shut up, you assholes,” to the group at large, which Gamora thinks kind of ruined the effect if there had ever been any intended effect. 

It’s odd; they’ve been off their ship for less than half a day and she’s already missing the clamouring mess and emotional chaos. She’s stopped thinking of it as a weakness, though, and she finds that something about knowing that about herself, knowing that she has been able to overcome that, settles like steely defiance in the pit of her stomach.

Thanos has all the stones. The sun on Terra is so bright. Gamora loves her idiot family. 

These are all facts, just how it is a fact that they’re here, now, and Gamora is sitting on this bench in the city of New York, tugging down at the soft sleeves of her oversized hoodie, her face shadowed by what Peter called a baseball cap. She wonders if Peter’s insistence that they find their own way around – “upstate”, is what Stark had said over the comm connection – is a point of pride or a personal challenge. She has not yet pointed out that it’s probably okay to admit to having never been in New York. Terra is a planet, same as any other. Drax was telling them just the other evening that he spent most of his time on his homeworld in his own village, tending to his family’s affairs.

She’ll bring it up soon, Gamora thinks, if the library gives Peter too much trouble. Wait another three and a half minutes, precisely, and then go and rescue him from the green-windowed building in front of her and offer to take on the unpalatable task of calling Stark back and asking for directions.

And anyway, if their purpose is to blend in and not attract attention, Gamora sitting alone on this bench with most of her face hidden is hardly inconspicuous. Most of the Terrans she’s seen walk past her seem to be walking around with their faces uncovered and their arms and legs bare under the hot sun, looking like Peter does.

Beside her, the girl with her nose in her book sniffs, and Gamora glances over at her. She’s small-boned, and a little dishevelled, with unkempt curly hair hanging in her face and a ratty grey tank-top hanging from her brown shoulders. The girl turns a page, and then looks up slowly to meet Gamora’s eye.

They’re silent for a moment; Gamora refuses to do anything so practical as pull her sleeves down any further or outright leave the bench, because incognito or not, she is a highly-trained, deeply respected and feared assassin, and a Guardian of the Galaxy – not a self-conscious fool. Let the girl leave, if she is uncomfortable. They can probably do damage control later.

She remains sitting, unflappable. The girl blinks at her, slowly, with shrewd eyes.

And then:

“That’s a cool colour.”

“Thank you,” says Gamora.

The girl nods, a dignified jerk of the chin that holds a tremendous amount of gravitas for a being so small, and turns back to her book. Gamora, absurdly, resists the sudden urge to smile.

Another few seconds pass, and Gamora watches the small winged creatures hopping along the length of the path in front of her, ruffling up their feathers as they peck at the concrete. With nothing better to do, her eyes flick back to the girl, who has turned yet another page in her book, and is holding it even closer to her nose than before. She seems uniquely at ease, Gamora thinks, in a way that she with all her galactic experience has not witnessed in many people.

“If you wanna really blend in, you should probably buy a Halloween costume,” says the girl, suddenly, not looking up from her book.

Gamora blinks, but doesn’t move.

“Oh?” she asks, hoping that the meaning of _Halloween costume_ will become clear tacitly. She’s so used to Peter following up his obscure Terran references with ten minutes of somewhat understandable rambling context that she’s forgotten how confusing they can be when the person making them assumes they’re familiar to you.

“Or like, get one of those full-body lycra suits, and then people won’t question the colour.”

Gamora doesn’t say anything; after another two beats, the girl looks back up at her.

“On second thought,” says the girl, “I like your hat.”

“Thank you,” says Gamora, again.

The girl nods once more, turning back to her book. On the ground, the small avian creatures flap around a little bit more and coo. Wordlessly, the girl takes two squashed plastic packets of what appear to be crackers out of her pocket and holds one out to Gamora.

Gamora takes it; she is trying to blend in, after all. The girl rips open the packet and starts flicking bits of cracker onto the ground for the birds, eyes still glued to her book. Gamora opens her own packet and gently sprinkles cracker crumbs along the sidewalk, watching as the birds scramble to peck at the food.

“You come here often?” asks the girl, once again sudden, that same steady, disinterested, casual voice floating in the air. Gamora respects that voice.

“No,” replies Gamora honestly, wondering at why she is being honest with a strange Terran girl. 

“Mmm,” says the girl, flipping another page and sniffing again.

“Do _you_ come here often?” asks Gamora, tilting her head.

The girl narrows her eyes.

“No. I’m just here waiting for my dumb friend Peter.”

The birds coo.

“Would you believe me,” says Gamora, “if I told you that I, too, am here waiting for my dumb friend Peter.”

Slowly, the girl looks up from her book, and gives Gamora a long, considering look, before she nods, as though having to deal with a dumb friend named Peter on the daily is something to respect in another person. 

Gamora nods back, and resumes feeding the birds.

It is, in a way, therapeutic. They are scrambling around across one of Terra’s busiest ports because her evil adoptive ex-father is trying to obliterate the universe as they know it sometime within the next week, her husband is having a minor existential crisis, they hit an Asgardian with their ship’s windshield two days ago, and Gamora is still not able to convince Groot to clean his room. Feeding these weird Terran birds with this enigmatic child on a bench in the city of New York is the most soothing activity Gamora has partaken in all month.

In front of her, the library door bursts open and Peter stumbles outside, clutching three maps to his chest and apologizing profusely to an angry-looking redheaded lady with a name-tag that reads _Meryl_. 

“– ‘m sorry, I didn’t think –”

“Stealing from a library!” screeches the lady, whacking his shoulders with her small palms. “Out! Out! Out and you stay out, or I’ll beat you with my least favorite copy of Ken Follet!”

“Can I just take this one ma –”

“No!”

“But –”

“No!”

Gamora is already on her feet; the cooing birds have scattered at the woman’s high-pitched screech, and the girl on the bench is frowning at the empty sidewalk. For someone so small and portly, the woman is surprisingly graceful when she rips the remaining tatters of Peter’s precious maps from his arms and slams the library door in his face.

Gamora sighs.

“It’s not my fault I don’t have your dumbass cards!” Peter yells at the closed door.

Gamora slides in front of him and grabs his wrist before he can do anything stupid, like re-enter the library.

“Perhaps we should try a different strategy,” she says, reasonably. 

“ _Stealing from a library_ ,” mimics Peter in a terrible nasal voice, shaking his head from side to side. “Like they’re some kinda frickin’ royal museum, y’all’d –”

“Okay, stop,” says Gamora, because it has been a long morning, and emotional support or not, she doesn’t think she’s quite prepared to start deciphering Peter’s strange slang abbreviations, always quick to thicken into his accent when he gets worked up. “Libraries didn’t work. We can call Stark.”

Peter’s eyes flick up at catch hers and his mouth immediately sets into a frown.

“Gamora –”

“No, listen,” she says. “Listen. _I_ will call him. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!”

“It’s okay,” she says again.

(It’s not okay. It’s not really okay for either of them, nothing is really okay, but if Gamora has learned anything from the man standing in front of her, it’s that sometimes you really just need to say “it’s okay” and move forward, together. Sometimes holding hands.)

(The holding hands thing really does help, so she grabs his.)

His green eyes are wide and on the brink of panicked, his hair still sticking up from earlier, and she knows – she can give him an opening. He’s ready for her to give him an opening.

They’re in the middle of the street, though, and their whole modus operandi was to remain inconspicuous. That’s what this whole damn map thing is about, and so Gamora twists his hand in hers so that she can lace their fingers properly and gives it a squeeze.

 _Later,_ she tells him. _Hold on another half hour and then we can go sit in an alley and both freak out_.

It’s not one of her more elegant plans, but it will have to do.

“But –” he starts, and she settles her shoulders under her oversized hoodie for another ten minutes of arguing out on this city of New York street, when a sort-of-familiar disinterested voice sounds behind them.

“You need a map?”

The girl has her head tilted again. Gamora steps out from around Peter.

“Yes,” she says.

“Cool,” says the girl, and rummages through her backpack (it’s covered in pins and buttons, Gamora notes) for a moment before holding out a folded up piece of paper that looks distinctly like a map.

“You, uh, just got one of those things lyin’ around?” asks Peter, blinking.

“I excel at emergency preparedness,” says the girl, utterly serious. Gamora takes the map. The girl nods, and Gamora nods back, and the girl turns back to her book.

“Okay,” says Peter. “Okay, we’re back on track – okay. Map. Ship. Go – wherever-the-fuck.”

“Yes,” says Gamora.

“Good luck,” says the girl, not looking up from her book, “finding your wherever-the-fuck.”

“Thank you,” says Gamora, for the fifth time. She grabs Peter’s hand again, and then remembers. “I wish you all the best in waiting for your friend.”

The girl looks up, and for the first time, grins.

Gamora grins back, and holds onto one large calloused hand and one frayed faded map, and pulls them both down the street with her. The world is probably going to end, but they have their map, and each other, and that strange girl on the bench is a good person. That in itself, Gamora thinks, is a reason.

They’ll be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> \- as mentioned, the infinity war trailer was referenced really vaguely (like thor getting run over by a spaceship) but mostly none of what happens in this fic has anything to do with upcoming canon except for like, things that everyone and their grandmothers already know are gonna happen
> 
> \- theyre not gonna be married by infinity war i know that Intellectually i KNOW that but it's a four year time jump and theyre always married in my heart
> 
> \- title's from chimamanda ngozi adichie's novel (of the same name) because I've been meaning to read it for ages and I really think that michelle would be reading that on that there sidewalk bench
> 
> \- michelle jones. an icon. an inspiration. she had like five lines but id lay down my life for her. what else is new
> 
> \- yes, i did write this whole fic just so that i could use that summary. i wear that like a badge of honour and ALSO, think of all the excellent comedic potential
> 
> \- i'd love to write more fic for these respective characters interacting so like send me ideas if u have any bye


End file.
